Rudy Giuliani - Life Long Liberal (LARGE RESOURCE

Author of Squandered Opportunities: New York’s Pataki Years and The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact

Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 3

Liberal Rudy Giuliani.......................................................................................................... 5

Liberal Republican Rudy Giuliani..................................................................................... 7

Abortion.............................................................................................................................. 11

Abortion-Partial Birth....................................................................................................... 15

Abortion – Taxpayer Funded........................................................................................... 16

Clinton, Bill and Giuliani................................................................................................... 17

Condom Distribution in Schools....................................................................................... 18

Conservative Party of New York State and Giuliani...................................................... 18

Crime and Giuliani............................................................................................................ 20

Culture War – Brooklyn Museum of Art and Giuliani.................................................. 20

Cuomo Endorsement by Giuliani..................................................................................... 21

Cuomo Endorsement – Giuliani Reasons for Rejecting Pataki..................................... 21

Cuomo Endorsement by Giuliani – Republican and Conservative Reactions............. 22

Education Standards in New York City.......................................................................... 23

Fiscal Management of New York City During Giuliani Mayoralty.............................. 24

Gay Bias Crime Law......................................................................................................... 26

Gay Domestic Partnership Rights.................................................................................... 26

Gay Games in New York City.......................................................................................... 27

Gay and Lesbian Exposition in New York City.............................................................. 28

Gay Pride Parade, New York City................................................................................... 28

Log Cabin Republican Club........................................................................................... 30

Gay Rights Bill, New York City....................................................................................... 30

Gay Rights Legislation, New York State......................................................................... 31

Gay Rights and Republican Party ................................................................................... 32

Gay Rights and Youth....................................................................................................... 32

Goldwater, Barry .............................................................................................................. 33

Gun Control....................................................................................................................... 33

Immigration........................................................................................................................ 35

Liberal Party of New York State and Rudy Giuliani..................................................... 36

Rent Control....................................................................................................................... 37

Ronald Reagan – Giuliani’s “Hero”?............................................................................... 37

School Vouchers................................................................................................................. 38

Tax Cuts............................................................................................................................. 39

Vietnam War – Draft and Rudy Giuliani........................................................................ 40

About the Editor................................................................................................................ 42

Books Cited........................................................................................................................ 42

Rudy Giuliani has been barnstorming the nation, proclaiming himself a conservative and saying his hero is Ronald Reagan. Recent opinion polls suggest his campaign is striking a chord with the GOP’s rank and file, and New York’s neo-conservatives have taken the lead in promoting the former Mayor as the savior of the Republican Party, and heaven knows the GOP needs saving.

But those polls also indicate that most Republicans around the country don’t really know where Mr. Giuliani stands on key issues, and those who do know are glossing over some very striking philosophical flaws—at least from a truly conservative perspective. Rudy supports abortion, including partial-birth abortion and government funding of abortion, and he is in favor of gun control, gay rights, domestic partnerships, and bias-crime laws. And that’s just a short list.

As a conservative activist who has observed Giuliani for many years (and ran against him in the ’93 mayoral election), I can say categorically that he is not now and never has been a conservative. In my judgment, his record leaves no doubt that he’s a lifelong liberal.

From undergraduate days writing for his college newspaper, throughout his extensive legal career, and especially in his very visible political service—up to an including his actions after 9/11—Giuliani has held and promoted leftist views.

In college, he attacked Barry Goldwater as an “incompetent, confused and sometimes idiotic man,” and he urged Republicans to “find men who will adequately address themselves to the problems of discrimination, of poverty, of education, of public housing and the many more problems that Senator Goldwater and company throw aside in the name of small laissez-faire government.” That was a long time ago, of course, but his views haven’t really changed, and to advance his career Giuliani has had no problem concealing his liberalism.

Liberal icon Mario Cuomo put it this way: “[Giuliani’s] basically very pragmatic. And he’s progressive. He is not a Neanderthal, a primitive conservative. But look, he’s a clever human being. He can shave and draw fine distinctions when he needs to.”

Giuliani’s first wife, Regina, agreed. She told Giuliani biographer Wayne Barrett that when she and Rudy separated in 1980, “she . . . still considered him to be a liberal Democrat.” She also observed that “[Rudy] generally won’t do things unless he believes them . . . but he’s not a saint, and he will do things that serve his interests.”

Rudy first switched from Democrat to Independent and then to Republican, not because he embraced the tenets of conservatism, but in order to get U.S. Justice Department jobs.

“He only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them,” Rudy’s mother, Helen Giuliani, told Barrett. “He’s definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn’t. He still feels very sorry for the poor.”

As a candidate for Mayor of New York, Giuliani distanced himself from Ronald Reagan and the GOP. The Times pointed out that he “noted frequently that he was supported by the liberal wing of the Republican Party and maintained that he never embraced Mr. Reagan’s broad conservative agenda.” And when conservatives attacked him during that ‘93 mayoral campaign, Giuliani said: “Their fear of me is that I’m going to be a beachhead for the establishment of a more progressive form of Republicanism.”

On another occasion he told a TV host, “I do not look to see what the catechism of conservatism says about how to solve a problem.”

And we mustn’t forget that when Giuliani endorsed Democrat Mario Cuomo for re-election to a fourth term as governor in 1994, he did so, he said, because Republican George Pataki had “a very right-wing voting record” and because Pataki proposed an “irresponsible” 25 percent state income tax cut.

Giuliani also seriously considered endorsing Bill Clinton in 1996. “Most of Clinton’s policies,” he said at the time, “are very similar to mine.”

Some Republicans and Conservatives are now claiming that Rudy has changed and really become more conservative, and they cite as an example his abandonment of his former vehement opposition to school vouchers. But when Rudy Crew, former New York City Public Schools Chancellor, asked Giuliani about this policy shift, the Mayor said: “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a political thing, a campaign thing. I’m not going to do anything. Don’t take it seriously.” This particular rightward shift was simply a ploy to enhance Giuliani’s 2000 U.S. Senate candidacy.

Other Republicans point to Rudy’s fiscal management of N.Y.C. as proof of his conservatism, and it’s true that during Giuliani’s first term when times were tough, he contained costs and made some tax cuts. But in his second term, when the economy was booming, Rudy became a big-spending liberal. City budget expenditures jumped 25 percent—twice the inflation rate—and Giuliani left his successor a projected operating deficit of $4.5 billion and New York’s citizens with the highest tax burden in any major municipality in America.

In Rudy Giuliani: Lifelong Liberal, I utilize Rudy’s own words, news reports and commentary from both the left and right to prove that contrary to what we’ve been hearing and reading, Rudy Giuliani is what he has always been—a liberal. It is my hope that after reviewing this material, conservatives will take stories of Giuliani’s Damascus Road-like conversion with a grain of salt.

As a kid attending school in Brooklyn, Giuliani was enchanted by John F. Kennedy’s campaign to become America’s first Catholic president, and he led the JFK-for-President committee at [Bishop Loughlin H.S.]. His devotion to the Kennedys continued in college, where he supported Bobby Kennedy’s campaign for the Senate and vilified the conservatives in the GOP. “The Republicans,” he scolded in his column, “must find men who will adequately address themselves to the problems of discrimination, of poverty, of education, of public housing and the many more problems that Senator Goldwater and company throw aside in the name of small laissez-faire government.

“Strong, large government is necessary,” Giuliani concluded, “to deal with industries that are national and international and with problems that cities and states have ignored for too long a time.”

[Giuliani’s first wife] Regina recalled that when she split with Rudy in early 1980, she had still considered him to be liberal Democrat. “He generally won’t do things unless he believes them” said Regina, adding, “but he’s not a saint, and he will do things that serve his interests.”

Rudy’s mother confirmed that her son’s registration switch was designed to snare a Reagan job. “He only became a Republican after he began to get all these jobs from them,” said Helen Giuliani in an unpublished 1988 interview. “He’s definitely not a conservative Republican. He thinks he is, but he isn’t. He still feels very sorry for the poor.”

He was more liberal than people knew on social issues. On issues of the economy, on crime, I’m somewhat conservative. On social issues I would call both of us liberals. ….I asked him on our second date what his position was on abortion, and it was pro-choice and always has been pro-choice.

During the 1960s, Rudy Giuliani was a self-described “Robert Kennedy Democrat.”

When he was a student at Manhattan College (1961-1965), he wrote an article for the campus newspaper supporting RFK over Republican Kenneth Keating in the 1964 Senate election. [Congressman] Peter King recalled him being sympathetic to the black rioters of Newark and Detroit during 1967.

But in 1975 Giuliani switched his party registration from Democrat to Independent, just before he got a job in Gerald Ford’s Justice Department, according to his mentor, Harold “Ace” Tyler. Tyler is the former federal judge who hired Giuliani as his deputy, to help him run the criminal division of the Justice Department in 1975.

On December 8, 1980, Giuliani changed his party registration again. This time he shifted it from Independent to Republican. This was just one month after Ronald Reagan’s election and just as Rudy was applying for a job to be the assistant Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He got the job under William French Smith. Three years later, President Reagan appointed Giuliani to be the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The young Rudy had little sympathy for the extremists who took over the Republican Party in 1964 with the nomination of Barry Goldwater, whom he considered a right-wing “patsy,” [and] a sycophant of the John Birch Society…. After the election, [Giuliani] the Quadrangle analyst continued to roast “the Goldwater people… [who] succeeded in inflicting a tremendous defeat on the Republican Party. Now these same people who have come very close to destroying the party founded in 1854 seem to think they have some right to hold onto the leadership of the Republican Party.”…

…In fact, he personally doubted that the American electorate would ever accept the “so-called conservative philosophy of government,” with all its “erratic” and potentially “dangerous” prescriptions….

He gave astringent advice to the vanquished Republicans, whom he felt must “adequately address themselves to the problems of discrimination, of poverty, of education, of public housing and the many more problems that Senator Goldwater and Company throw aside in the name of small laissez-faire government….

Strong, large government is necessary to deal with industries that are national and international and with problems that cities and states have ignored.”

Yet the best evidence is that, at least intellectually, Giuliani was a liberal about race until he ran for mayor. He once told me he had a poster of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his room while he was in high school. He told me how he stood on line for hours to view Robert Kennedy’s casket, after serving as a volunteer in Kennedy’s campaign for president in 1968. Giuliani told me that he voted for George McGovern for president in 1972, rather than Richard Nixon.

I find that the people you would describe as a moderate Republican or a moderate Democrat, roughly, I agree with nine out of 10 times.

“He’s basically very pragmatic,” Mario Cuomo says. “And he’s progressive. He is not a Neanderthal, a primitive conservative. But look, he’s a clever human being. He can shave and draw fine distinctions when he needs to.”

What kind of Republican? Is [Giuliani], for instance, a Reagan Republican? [Giuliani] pauses before answering: “I’m a Republican.”

Mr. Rockefeller represented “a tradition in the Republican Party I’ve worked hard to re-kindle – the Rockefeller, Javits, Lefkowitz tradition.”

Mayoral hopeful Rudolph Giuliani said yesterday that if he wins the GOP primary, as expected, he will rename his Republican line on the November ballot after the Independent Fusion Party founded by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

The state’s leading elected Republican, Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, denounced the decision as “ambition and arrogance at its worst. Can you imagine that the party that was good enough for Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and George Bush isn’t good enough for Rudolph Giuliani?”

Mr. Giuliani solicited the Liberal Party nomination, he actually says, partly because many of his friends and relatives would have been too embarrassed to vote for a Republican. Mr. Giuliani campaigned for Bobby Kennedy and says he voted for George McGovern. His campaign staff includes at least one former Mike Dukakis aide. He told a TV interviewer, “I do not look to see what the catechism of conservatism says about how to solve a problem.”

What’s the difference between one liberal, Dinkins, and another liberal, Giuliani?” said George L. Clark, the former Republican state chairman and Lauder campaign chairman. Senator D’Amato predicted before the primary that, if elected, Mr. Giuliani would become a Democrat like the last Republican who won City Hall, John V. Lindsay.

“My political party put together with the liberal party can produce the kind of change New York City saw with Fiorella LaGuardia and with John Lindsay.”

“Fiorella LaGuardia was the kind of person who could rise above ideology and get this City moving towards solutions.”

The Giuliani campaign should follow the example of John Lindsay’s first campaign for mayor. Like Lindsay’s campaign – Fiorello LaGuardia’s for that matter, too – Giuliani is “fusion” candidate for mayor, not the Republican candidate for mayor.

The Giuliani campaign should emphasize its candidate’s independence from traditional national Republican policies. Especially useful in this strategy is Giuliani’s role in overturning a Reagan administration attempt to throw disabled people off the Social Security rolls, his prosecution of Republican elected officials – especially his authorization for calling his boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese III, a sleaze, and his un-Republican views on many social issues of concern to New Yorkers, like abortion, gun control and bias protection for homosexuals.

Giuliani, who favors Massachusetts Gov. William Weld – like Giuliani, a former prosecutor – as the 1996 GOP presidential nominee, countered that conservatives fear losing control of the Republican Party after Democrat Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory.

“Their fear of me is that I’m going to be a beachhead for the establishment of a more progressive form of Republicanism,” said Giuliani.

Rudy even expressed his pleasure when he wasn’t invited to the Republican National Convention in San Diego. “If I take three or four days off from city business, I want to do it for a substantive purpose. It didn’t seem to me any substantive purpose could be served by going to the Republican convention.”

In New York City, a Republican candidate must give Democrats a chance to vote for him on a non-Republican ticket. But why did not Giuliani merely run as an independent, instead of antagonizing the right with his Liberal embrace? “Tradition,” he told us – specifically, the fusion tradition of LaGuardia and Lindsay.

Those two modern Republican mayors of New York ultimately left the GOP. Is that the road Rudy Giuliani will travel? “This is a different time,” he responded, adding that “you don’t have to change yourself into a Democrat.” Actually, he was a Democrat most of his life and, in 1972, “reluctantly” voted for McGovern. In 1973, he changed his party registration to independent and began to consider himself a Republican when working in the Nixon administration Justice Department, but did not register as one until 1980.

[Giuliani’s] managerial, rather than ideological, role for Republicans, derived from Nelson Rockefeller, rather than Ronald Reagan, suggests no sweeping policy change in governing the city. “In order to meet the housing needs of the lower middle class in the city, you have to have rent control,” Giuliani told us. He opposes increases in city taxes, “but I absolutely will not take the oath” and says President Bush erred in his 1988 anti-tax pledge.

Dinkins is running in the spirit of 1990s liberalism, as a victim. “They” – Republicans in Washington – caused his problems. He deserves to be the first big city black mayor to fail to be reelected. Which is not to say that Giuliani, the nominee of the Republican and Liberal parties, deserves to win.

Neither man is for meaningful school choice (vouchers redeemable at public and private schools) or for repealing rent controls on even luxury apartments (“too emotional” an issue says Giuliani). Neither man is for the sort of serious privatization entertained by mayors in Philadelphia, Indianapolis and elsewhere. Neither man had sympathy for the parents who rebelled when the school system began inflicting “Heather Has Two Mommies” and similar sexual indoctrination on grade-schoolers.

George Pataki and Rudy Giuliani are coming increasingly to resemble Rockefeller and Lindsay. They may pretend otherwise, but don’t believe it.

The governor just presided over the single largest expansion of entitlements in New York since Rockefeller played midwife to Medicaid in 1966.

And the mayor makes no bones about his standing as a “moderate” New York Republican. He’s not exactly donning Lindsay’s mantle; Rudy remains tough on crime, and his heart’s in the right place on welfare reform. But he continues to hold New York’s social conservatives at arm’s length, and in a big-profile manner at that.

“Giuliani revives the old fight between the Rockefeller branch and the grass-rooters,” said Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist, emphasizing the Republican platform’s opposition to legalized abortion. “I don’t think he could succeed. I don’t see how he could modify his position enough.”

“See, I don’t equate abortion with murdering a child, which I guess puts me in conflict with the teaching of the Catholic church. Catholics in public office often make the mistake, a subtle but important one, of saying they agree with the teaching of the church, but because I’m in public office, I have to put conscience aside and enforce the law. They haven’t thought out the implication of what they’re saying. If you agree with the church, there’s no difference between murdering a one-year-old and eliminating a fetus – it’s the same act. There is a moral consequence to the elimination of a fetus, but it’s not the same thing as murder.”

The simple fact is that whether I am the Mayor or [Democrat David Dinkins] the Mayor, it’s going to be the same for women who want an abortion. I’m going to fund abortion, to make certain that poor women are not deprived of an abortion, and I’m going to oppose making abortion illegal. That’s a non-issue.

“I made a terrible mistake on abortion last time,” Giuliani allowed. “I should have said I was pro-choice and stopped. But I spent so much time explaining the ideology and theology of how I reached my position, nobody understood what I was saying.”

Leaflets distributed by the Giuliani campaign …. said that he opposes restrictions to Federal Medicaid financing for abortions and opposes the Hyde Amendment, which is intended to deny support for that financing.

At a breakfast meeting in Atlanta with Republicans who favor abortion rights, Mr. Giuliani said a political party that favored laissez-faire government in fiscal affairs should also allow people to make choices in their personal lives.

“For a party which has such a strong belief in economic choice – which really comes out of the notion of freedom – it would seem to me that it would be entirely consistent that that choice would also extend to the most personal and difficult decisions that people have to make.”

[Giuliani] also supports New York’s abortion law “as it stands,” which allows pregnancies to be legally terminated within 24 weeks of gestation and only afterward with a physician’s consent when the mother’s life is in danger.

“I feel there are adequate protections and there shouldn’t be changes,” Giuliani said last week during a Times Union interview, adding that he would not support a ban on third-trimester abortions. “New York shouldn’t be ashamed of the law…. That law, I think, is a fair one and works to create the necessary scope of freedom and prohibition.”

My position on abortion is precisely the same today as it was yesterday. I haven’t changed overnight…. New York should not be ashamed of the [state] law [legalizing abortion].

Right now, the Mayor is pro-choice. That’s his position and that’s his position, and it hasn’t changed and the Mayor believes what he believes in.

My position on abortion is exactly the same as it has always been, I don’t see my position on that changing.

“As a Republican, it made more sense for me to be pro-choice. I think Republicans more often want people to make choices about their own lives,” and he advocated government intrusion “only to the extent necessary.”

The former mayor told the student audience: “I think some people will come to the moral choice about abortion that it is sinful or wrong. But ultimately I think it is the woman’s right and the choice she has to make.”

And: “Seven out of 10 Americans are pro-life and pro-choice. They would prefer that somebody didn’t have an abortion. They might even prefer that somebody didn’t have an abortion. They might even prefer themselves not to have an abortion. They say as far as government is concerned, it shouldn’t interfere with abortion or shouldn’t criminalize it.”

In other words, not as originally described. Mr. Giuliani’s remarks were basically what he’s been saying for years.

After clarifying his clarifications, Rudy Giuliani has finally decided he’s in favor of legal abortion, a decision that will be viewed as either sensible, sad, cynical or opportunistic…. Is no one concerned about parental consent, allowing 13-year-old girls to have abortions without even telling their parents? Is no one concerned about millions of taxpayer dollars being used to fund abortions?

Is no voter concerned that the American birth rate has fallen, that we are not even reproducing ourselves because 25 million Americans have been destroyed in the womb since 1973, when abortion was made legal?

For these voters, Rudy Giuliani once seemed to offer an alternative to the full-speed-ahead Democrats, but now that hope has vanished. Rudy has joined the crowd, so there’s no debate on the greatest issue of the day, and that makes all of us losers. It may yet make Rudy a loser, too. Why change for more of the same?

He is a bright and talented manager. But he’s also a skillful compromiser and some principles simply cannot be negotiated away….he parts company on an issue about which there can be no compromise, no negotiation. Rudolph Giuliani not only supports the right to choose an abortion, he also supports the right to perform partial birth abortion. He would defend the right to slaughter a fully-formed and healthy nine month old pre-born on the day it’s being born.

Mr. Giuliani has said that New York State law should not be changed to outlaw the [Partial-Birth Abortion] procedure.

In 1997, Giuliani’s position was clear as he sought reelection in a city where abortion rights enjoy strong support.

At the time, his campaign chief filled out a National Abortion Rights Action League questionnaire saying Giuliani would “oppose legislation that would make criminals of doctors who perform intact D and X abortions.”

Intact dilation and extraction is the technical term for late-term abortion, which opponents call partial-birth abortion.

Kelli Conlin, executive director of NARAL’s New York affiliate, said she she (sic) “can’t imagine he would change his position. He would look pretty awkward if he did.”…

In the 1997 questionnaire, a Giuliani aide also said the mayor backed Medicaid funding for abortion and opposed any legislation to require a minor to obtain permission from a parent to obtain an abortion.

An aide to Mayor Giuliani yesterday said the mayor still opposes certain restrictions on late-term abortions – a controversial position that could prevent him from winning the Conservative Party endorsement for Senate.

Likely Senate candidate Mayor Giuliani says he’s sticking to his guns on opposing restrictions on so-called partial-birth abortions – a political hot potato that could cost him the Conservative Party endorsement.

“I’ve only had to deal with [the issue] as the mayor of New York and I supported it, and I don’t see any reason to change that position,” Giuliani tells “Evans & Novak” on CNN, scheduled to air today.

For now, the mayor’s position appears firm: Earlier this month, Mr. Giuliani told The Albany Times Union that he would not support a ban on late-term abortions and that he supports the state’s abortion law. “New York shouldn’t be ashamed of the law,” Mr. Giuliani said. “That law, I think, is a fair one and works to create the necessary scope of freedom and prohibition.”

At a City Hall news conference this week, Mr. Giuliani brushed off a question about late-term abortion, saying that “my position on abortion is precisely the same today as it was yesterday. I haven’t changed over-night.”

Giuliani, who backs abortion rights, has opposed a ban on the controversial late-term abortion procedure.

[Giuliani] would continue the city’s discretionary spending of $10 million a year on abortions not otherwise eligible for state or Federal reimbursement.

As mayor, Rudy Giuliani will uphold a woman’s right of choice to have an abortion. Giuliani will fund all city programs which provide abortions to insure that no woman is deprived of her right due to an inability to pay. He will oppose reductions in state funding. He will oppose making abortion illegal.

Shortly before his last-minute endorsement of Bob Dole in the 1996 presidential election, [Giuliani] told the Post’s Jack Newfield that “most of Clinton’s policies are very similar to most of mine.” The Daily News quoted [Giuliani] as saying that March: “Whether you talk about President Clinton, Senator Dole…. The country would be in very good hands in the hands of any of that group.”

Revealing at one point that he was “open” to the idea of endorsing Clinton, he explained: “When I ran for mayor both times, ’89 and ’93, I promised people that I would be, if not bipartisan, at least open to the possibility of supporting Democrats.”

“Democrats and Republicans working together – Kind of interesting it happens on the same weekend that President Clinton has done that. He’s kind of reached out to try to create a little more bipartisan government in Washington. I’ve reached out and created bipartisan government in New York City.

In an interview on the shuttle to Washington, Mr. Giuliani compared his warming relations with Mr. Clinton to Mayor Edward I. Koch’s efforts to find common ground with President Reagan in the early 1980’s.

Speaking of Mr. Clinton, Mr. Giuliani said: “We’ve gotten to know each other better. You get to work with people in the White House and get to know them, and that can only help the city.”

But some New York Republicans in Congress compared Mr. Giuliani to John Lindsay, the last Republican-Liberal mayor, who crossed party lines and became a Democrat. They said he miscalculated in aiding a Democratic President as Congressional elections approached, a move that would backfire especially if Republicans pick up 25 or more New House seats in November.

“If he feels so strongly about the party, he shouldn’t go on Clinton’s road show,” [Congressman Peter] King of Long Island said. Reminding reporters Mr. Giuliani had once been a liberal Democrat, the Long Island Republican added, “I think he’s reverting to his old days.”

Bishop Thomas V. Daily, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, has criticized Mayor-elect Rudolph W. Giuliani for supporting the distribution of condoms in the public schools.

In a statement issued Friday afternoon, Bishop Daily, the spiritual leader of 1.6 million Catholics in Brooklyn and Queens, said he was “disappointed and dismayed that our Mayor-elect, Rudy Giuliani, has indicated that he supports this dangerously irresponsible policy.”

…. In Puerto Rico, where he has been vacationing, Mr. Giuliani said yesterday: “My position has always been that condoms should be available. I support that program. But I believe that parents should have the opportunity to opt out if they choose.”

Mr. Giuliani went on to say that “the realities of today’s society” are that condoms have to be available in public schools. His spokesman, Richard Bryers, explained that that reality was “the treat of AIDS.”

Herb London, a professor who won 21% of the vote as a Conservative Party candidate for governor in 1990 and is running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination next year, hosted a reception for Mr. Giuliani at his home. “He tried to appeal to conservatives, but wasn’t at all convincing,” Mr. London recalls. “New York City’s still filled with Rockefeller Republicans, and Giuliani is the heir to that tradition.”

This is a man who has worked to elect Bobby Kennedy, George McGovern and Mario Cuomo…

I cannot deny that Rudy Giuliani has done a good job as Mayor of New York City. But, Rudy Giuliani supports partial-birth abortion. He’s said it last Sunday on Meet the Press and he repeated it in the New York Times, Daily News and New York Post. Giuliani’s also marched in New York’s Gay Pride parades. By these actions, he’s supported the radical left’s anti-family message….

He believes that the Second Amendment – the right to keep and bear arms, doesn’t matter anymore. It seems that he believes that he knows more than Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the rest of our founding fathers.

He has used his bully pulpit to advocate higher taxes for hard-working New Yorkers, who commute to New York City every day.

At an Albany press conference, Conservative Party chief Mike Long blasted the mayor for his stand on issues from partial-birth abortion to gay rights.

“One reason he’s not seeking our endorsement is that maybe he’s not qualified to get it,” Long said later. “He’s wrong on too many issues and he feels uncomfortable trying to get our endorsement.”

ALBANY – In his harshest criticism of Rudolph Giuliani to date, the leader of the state Conservative Party said Monday the New York City mayor fails on almost every issue conservatives hold dear and he should not run for U.S. Senate.

“I think I would rather that he didn’t run,” Michael Long said during his party’s political action conference in Albany.

….“But since Giuliani refuses to make any pro-life concessions, even including a refusal to deplore partial-birth abortion, I have urged the Conservative Party not to nominate him and appear to wink at this heresy….

Giuliani has done a magnificent job in reducing crime. But his character flaws make it impossible for him to give credit to former police commissioner Bill Bratton, who put together the police team responsible for the initial successes, and to David Dinkins, whose legislation funded an additional 8,000 cops for the city.

That was a double con game: They had already tried this in Baltimore; Arnold Lehman [director of the Brooklyn Museum], the guy who brought the show, figured out in Baltimore that if you outraged Catholics, you would bring liberals to your side and make a reputation for yourself. He sees it in London and it’s a sensation in the full sense. The full title is “The Sensation Show” and it’s owned by [Charles] Saatchi. The irony here of course is that this is Margaret Thatcher’s PR adviser. Saatchi has these commercial arrangements with auction houses, which are much less than ethical. He comes to New York with this show and he can’t get support for it – everyone sees that this is an ethically compromised show, in a variety of ways, and he can’t get any major sponsors. He goes to Trojan condoms; even they don’t want to be part of it. So the idea is to hype the show, to get it sold, to help the Brooklyn Museum. Now some of the pieces of art that caused problems in England weren’t even brought here – the handprints of a woman who had mutilated and murdered five children. It used to be that art created controversy; now controversy gives something the aura of art, whether it has any artistic value or not, so it was a double con. Giuliani’s con was as follows: he didn’t want to cave in to the Conservative Party on abortion, so he was looking for an issue. Now I can’t prove this – I found no smoking gun, no memo – but I’m talking to people and watching it closely at the time. He was looking for a way to appeal to conservative Catholics without reversing his position and this was perfect. Lehman was a fraud; Lehman was corrupt; and he went after him.

“From my point of view as the mayor of New York City, the question that I have to ask is, ‘Who has the best chance in the next four years of successfully fighting for our interest? Who understands them, and who will make the best case for it?’ Our future, our destiny is not a matter of chance. It’s a matter of choice. My choice is Mario Cuomo.”

It’s Mario Cuomo who offers us the best opportunity for change, for a different reason, because of what he’s been through and because of his vast intelligence, his unquestioned integrity and his honesty. I believe he can apply those talents to the solutions for our problems and even see his way to different solutions. In any event, the ideas expressed by Mario Cuomo will be his own. He’s a leader.

Giuliani pressured GOP candidates and county leaders to reject Pataki; his surrogates and campaign operatives told Republican leaders that if they helped Pataki, their districts would suffer; a Republican campaign contributor says Giuliani’s people told him that if he gave to Pataki, he’d be “locked out of City Hall.”

Giuliani also called Pataki’s proposal for a 25 percent tax cut “irresponsible….”

“Once again, Rudolph Giuliani has demonstrated that liberalism is the foundation of his political philosophy. While Giuliani sold a bill of goods to trusting Republicans and Reagan Democrats that he had abandoned his roots as a McGovern Democrat, in his endorsement of Mario Cuomo, Mr. Liberal himself, he has shown his true colors. Giuliani’s argument that Cuomo will be better for the city has a hollow ring to it. Perhaps Rudy wants a governor who will sign over a blank check to constantly bail out the city from its fiscal problems. Giuliani knows, as do all New Yorkers, that Cuomo’s liberal policies have been an economic disaster for our city and state.”

“But Rudy doesn’t care. He has proven he will do anything to stop the election of a conservative Republican – but he won’t succeed.”

“[Quite] frankly, you have to understand the fact that Rudy Giuliani was a McGovern Democrat, he was endorsed by the Liberal Party when he ran for Mayor. In his heart, he’s a Democrat. He’s paraded all over this country with Bill Clinton and, in fact, he’s very comfortable with Mario Cuomo. But what Rudy Giuliani wants is to be bailed out in the city, in the mess he’s in, and everybody understands very clearly in politics that they struck a deal, that Mario’s going to continue to be the big spender, save Rudy the options of raising taxes by pouring money statewide into the City of New York and bailing it out. Quite frankly, I predict that he will join the Democratic Party.”

“I would be disappointed in that a lot of Republicans helped Rudy when he ran for mayor. For him to turn around and support Cuomo, who is anathema to everything that we want for New York and America, would be a disappointment. I think there are going to be a lot of Republicans who are going to be disappointed in Rudy.”

Rush Limbaugh used a large part of his radio broadcast to consider the implications of the Giuliani endorsement. He said it was particularly galling that Mr. Giuliani’s move was being described, in a New York Times editorial and elsewhere, as putting principle above partisanship.

“Excuse me, New York Times and everyone else in New York State and New York City, but I am fed up with the current definition of principle,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “That definition is that a Republican can only be principled when he agrees with a Democrat. A Republican can only be principled when he leaves his own party and joins Democrats or liberals in what they want to do.”

Alluding to the predictions of big Republican gains in Congress, the commentator argued that Mr. Giuliani had “embarked on a course to enrage and infuriate those who may be empowered in a couple of weeks in Washington.” Mr. Limbaugh suggested: “Rudy, make it official and become a Democrat. Just do that. That would be the principled thing to do.”

“It’s a shame, because we worked so hard for that man, but he’s a sellout, obviously,” said John Sweeney, executive director of the state Republican Party, as the mayor arrived in Albany on Saturday.

Sweeney said he wasn’t surprised to see Giuliani taking his support for Cuomo beyond New York City: “Once a Judas, always a Judas, I guess.”

At the end of Giuliani’s second term, the proportion of students able to pass the eighth-grade English test declined to 29 percent. The percentage of students passing this test dropped 6 percent over 4 years.

In the eighth-grade math test, only 29.7 percent of students met the state standard in 2001.

Graduation rates in high school dropped. Class size stagnated. It took months to repair broken windows. A 1999 report by the Board of Education said that more than half of the schools still weren’t connected to the Internet.

Rudy Giuliani’s fiscal opportunism caused New York City to go from a $3 billion budget surplus in 1998, to a $4.5 billion budget deficit when Giuliani left office on December 31, 2001, that grew quickly to $5 billion, by November of 2002, for fiscal year 2003-4.

This mismanagement of prosperity is a large part of the Giuliani legacy. He left the city’s finances in a mess that was aggravated by the recession, and the collateral damage to the city’s economy from 9/11, including unexpected expenditures for cleanup, overtime, and relief.

Giuliani spent his surplus in two ways. First on projects he thought would help him in his anticipated Senate campaign in 2000 against Hillary Clinton. And then on polishing his legacy in his final year, after he pulled out of the Senate race.

“I would estimate that about $2.5 billion of the city’s $5 billion budget deficit in fiscal 2002 was attributable to Giuliani. He rolled over the debt each year and funded the projects and programs he thought would benefit him politically.”

Giuliani bequeathed his successor a huge budget deficit by increasing spending by more than 25 percent during his second term, which was twice the rate of inflation; by adding 25,000 people to the city’s payroll – many of them patronage hires; by increasing debt payments to $4 billion a year; by using fiscal tricks that pushed the costs onto future generations; and by enacting tax cuts of $2.2 billion that mainly benefited the wealthy.

One of those who criticized Giuliani on his borrowing habits during a boom period was the conservative Tom Carroll, the president of Change New York. In the February 21, 2001 issue of the New York Times, Carroll was quoted saying of both Giuliani and Governor George Pataki: “There wasn’t the fiscal discipline we had hoped to see overall. But on the debt, there was no discipline at all.”

On the day Giuliani left office, the city’s workforce was the highest in history – tens of thousands more than when Giuliani came into office, promising to reduce the workforce.

During his 1993 campaign, Giuliani suggested cutting 35,000 positions from the city payroll. This was not a radical idea; for example, an advisory panel appointed by then-Mayor David Dinkins suggested that 25,000 positions could be eliminated.

Once in office, however, Giuliani changed the composition rather than the size of the workforce. He added about 4,000 cops and more than 14,000 “pedagogical” employees, subtracting a like amount from other categories.

He also found ways to shift a net 9,000 additional city employees into programs funded entirely by state or federal grants – which can always be withdrawn, leaving the city to pick up the tab.

The bottom line: As of November 2000, the city’s total full-time headcount stood at 253,348 – 1,012 more employees than were on the payroll when Dinkins left office. Indeed, the city’s workforce is as large as it’s ever been.

It’s official: According to Mayor Giuliani’s latest fiscal plan, the next mayor will face a budget gap of $2.7 billion – which, if it actually materializes, will be $400 million more than the one Giuliani inherited from David Dinkins.

So much for the long term. Unfortunately, the short term doesn’t look so hot, either.

New York’s budget is still balanced, technically. But subtract last year’s leftover surplus, and the city would be running an operating deficit of $400 million, growing to $2.4 billion in the fiscal year that begins July 1. By the time Giuliani’s successor puts together his first fiscal plan, there won’t be much surplus left to work with.

The main culprit: city operations spending, which is up roughly 25 percent over the last four years and would grow another 4 percent next year under Giuliani’s plan….

At an absolute minimum, New York will still be locked into a trend of spending a half-billion or so more dollars than it collects in revenue every year – despite imposing the heaviest tax burden of any major city in the country.

Giuliani sounds more like a reformer now. He supports the bias-related crime bill the Republicans are cynically blocking from passage in Albany.

Rudy Giuliani has always believed it important to send would-be bias criminals a clear message that any harassment or assault motivated by the victim’s race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation will be met by vigorous prosecution and stiffer penalties. To this end, in 1988, as U.S. Attorney, Rudy Giuliani called for the passage of the Bias-Related Crime Bill, which had been introduced for the first time. In April 1992, Rudy Giuliani and several New York City Republican elected officials joined with the Tri-State Log Cabin Club to call on the State Senate to pass immediately the Bias-Related Crime Bill.

The Giuliani Administration will continue the current regulations for the registration of domestic partners as provided for by Executive Orders 48 and 49.

National Republicans can lump it if they don’t like his new domestic-partners bill, Mayor Giuliani said yesterday.

“I really haven’t thought about what the impact is on Republican politics or national politics or Democratic politics,” Giuliani said.

The bill he submitted to the City Council would extend the benefits city agencies must grant to gay and lesbian couples.

“I’m proud of it,” Giuliani said of the bill. “I think it puts New York City ahead of other places in the country.”

Many gay and lesbian groups spent yesterday celebrating Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s bill to make domestic partners equal to spouses in the eyes of the city, and critics used the occasion to issue an obituary of his hopes for national office.

Supporters said the law proposed by Mr. Giuliani would be a worthy milestone for the city where the gay rights movement was born 29 years ago. Under his plan, which was released Monday, domestic partners, unmarried couple who register with the city, would have the same rights and benefits as spouses in city contracts, housing and death benefits.

The matters covered are as small as parking permits and as large as hospitalization insurance. National gay rights groups said the law proposed by Mr. Giuliani would put New York City in a league whose only other players are San Francisco and Hawaii in the rights granted to same-sex partners.

Mr. Giuliani is scheduled to deliver a formal welcoming speech at the Gay Games. The Mayor’s aides helped pave the way for closing ceremonies to be held at Yankee Stadium. And an interview with Mr. Giuliani is featured on the cover of the current issue of The Advocate, which describes itself as the national gay and lesbian news magazine.

The Mayor and his aides have largely portrayed his welcoming remarks as a routine civic duty at a sporting event that will bring in several hundred million dollars from tourists. But Mr. Giuliani’s appearance at the Gay Games is also another step in his political self-definition and his effort to forge a Republicanism that can appeal to both “family-value” conservatives and homosexuals.

Mr. Giuliani and his aides say there is no reason to be surprised by his embrace of the Gay Games. “This is a major sporting event that New York City is proud and happy to have,” said Deputy Mayor Fran Reiter, who has been the administration’s chief liaison with the organizers. “This is exactly the kind of event the Mayor of New York is always going to participate in.”

Mayor Rudolph w. Giuliani has announced that for the second consecutive year, New York City will host the National Gay and Lesbian Business and Consumer Exposition. The event will be held at the New York Coliseum April 27 and 28.

Said the mayor: “When the National Gay and Lesbian Business and Consumer Exposition first came to New York last year, I told organizers that I hoped the city would become the perennial home for this great event. Well, now it has. New York City is the world capital of commerce and industry, and an increasingly profitable place in which to do business. The tremendous success enjoyed by the Expo should send a message to the business community that the City of New York can make a wonderful business partner.”

Up Fifth Avenue the column came, a long gaudy line of “drag queens, transvestites, self-proclaimed queers, cross-dressers, dykes on bikes, topless lesbians, exhibitionist freaks…in a spectacle reflecting the decadence of the times.”

Thus does New York Post columnist Ray Kerrison describe June 27’s Gay Pride Parade. “For sheer vulgarity,” he adds, “there is no public display in New York to compare with this annual rite.”

After the march passed St. Patrick’s, hated symbol of Catholicism, debris and condoms had to be swept from the cathedral steps.

This year’s parade, however, in one respect, was different. In the caravan marched the Republican candidate for mayor, Rudy Giuliani. His “unseemly hustle for the homosexual vote,” Kerrison writes, “marks his collapse as a credible public figure.” Rudy marched just behind the float of the North-American Man-Boy Love Association.

Mayor Giuliani, 24 hours after capitulating to mob rule and permitting an illegal homosexual and lesbian march up Fifth Avenue in defiance of a federal court order, defended the decision by asserting: “It is not conceivable that you can arrest 6,000 people without creating an enormous riot, so what you do is you allow them to march.”….

In front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, these morons yelled four-letter words, pointed their middle fingers at the cathedral and lay down in the street. Dozens of bare-breasted women and about a dozen naked men and women sent up vulgar chants. Others were dressed as cardinals, priests and nuns, some in satanic dress, in a massive, perverted display of anti-Catholic bigotry.

Giuliani, the Catholic mayor, not only ignored this blasphemy and abdicated his duty by permitting unlawful acts, but he welcomed these people and their allies to City Hall, congratulated them, praised the cops for failing to uphold the law, and patted himself on the back for his brilliant strategy. The inmates truly have taken over the asylum.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani invited 125 gay and lesbian New Yorkers for breakfast at Gracie Mansion yesterday. He told them he would join in the Lesbian and Gay Pride March on Sunday, after it passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “You have a right to make your First Amendment expression,” he said.

Once again the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has done the rest of us a favor. In typically measured and reasonable terms, the league has asked that the route of the “gay pride” parade next Sunday be changed to bypass Fifth Avenue directly in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, thereby avoiding any possible encounter with worshipers leaving the cathedral after the noon liturgy.

The request makes eminently good sense. There’s nothing of a “we-don’t-want-you-in-our-neighborhood” attitude about it; it’s based on the logical concern that the behavior of many marchers in past “gay pride” parades is not simply anti-Catholic but grossly offensive – in every sense of that phrase – to standards of public conduct….

It makes perfect sense, then, to ask for a minor revision of plans so that Massgoers would not be subjected to such offensive and anti-Church displays.

Not to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, however. The mayor felt that since the route had already been approved there was nothing he could do. He didn’t want to involve himself in a decision already made.

In this case, the hesitation is even more disturbing because Giuliani knows exactly what happened last year.

Catholic New York photographers were present on “gay pride” day in 1994. Many of the photos they took could not be published – not only in this newspaper, but in any newspaper, daily or weekly, religious or secular, that prides itself in respecting the sensitivity of its readers. Beyond that, the editors find themselves hesitant even to describe the behavior depicted in the photos. They were that bad.

Giuliani thought so too. He was shown the CNY parade photos last year and was shocked almost beyond words. He saw them at a time when apologists were attempting to pass off reports of marchers’ misbehavior as excesses of youthful exuberance on the part of a few. The pictures should have convinced Giuliani otherwise, and at the time it seemed that they did.

Now that appears wrong; the mayor does not want to get involved. So be it. That’s his choice.

“I want to show that our campaign embraces everyone in the City of New York.”

Giuliani favors extended civil-rights protection for gays and lesbians. Giuliani urged, by letter, to the New York Senate Majority Leader to pass the state’s first ever gay rights bill, but did it privately.

“I am writing to convey my support for the current legislation to prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians, and to urge you to allow the bill onto the floor of the Senate for prompt action.”

“…It is my belief that we can penalize discrimination [against gays] without creating any potentially objectionable special privileges or preferential treatment.”

Under urging from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Republican-Liberal candidate for Mayor, repeated his support last week for a gay rights measure in the State Assembly and called for an end to the deadlock by conservative Republicans who have prevented it from moving to the Senate floor.

Rudy Giuliani supports the passage of the state Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights Bill, which would add sexual orientation to the criteria upon which discrimination is prohibited. In February of this year, he called on the State Senate Majority Leader to allow the bill to proceed to a floor vote. Urging expansion to the entire State the protection against discrimination which has been in effect in New York City and other jurisdictions around the nation for a number of years, Giuliani called on the members of the State Senate to be the true advocates of positive change and [be] in the vanguard of those who seek to achieve real equality in our society.

Now Rudy Giuliani has jumped on the bandwagon, pressing the state Republican Party to release a gay-rights bill to the Senate floor for a vote. Marching in Sunday’s [Gay Pride] parade, he has enlisted in the struggle to destroy the family. What a perfectly abominable springboard to seek high political office.

Politically speaking, the campaign should utilize Massachusetts Governor William Weld as a surrogate on gay and lesbian issues. Like Giuliani, Weld is a former federal prosecutor, Justice Department official and liberal Republican, committed to increasing the civil rights and legal protections of gays and lesbians.

In his interview in The Advocate, Mr. Giuliani spoke out for an inclusive Republican party, saying, “There is no reason why the party shouldn’t appeal to gays and lesbians in the same way it does to all Americans.”

He criticized the anti-abortion, anti-homosexual oratory of Patrick J. Buchanan at the 1992 Republican National Convention as a mistake and held up Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts as a model of more tolerant Republicanism.

And yesterday he noted that he believed in a Republicanism that preaches an economic philosophy of limited government. If Republicans “were consistent – and some are and some aren’t,” he said, “then they’d come to the same view about someone’s sexual orientation or sexual preferences, that this is not something the government was designed to get deeply involved in.”

Rudy Giuliani applauds the commendable efforts of Massachusetts Governor William P. Weld’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth and embraces many of the recommendations noted in the Commission’s report, Making Schools Safe for Lesbian and Gay Youth. As Governor Weld said at the swearing-in ceremony of the Commission’s members, “We must abolish the prejudice and isolation faced by gay and lesbian youth. We need to help them stay at home and stay in school so they can have healthy and productive lives.”

He [Giuliani] described John Kennedy as “great and brilliant.” Barry Goldwater was an “incompetent, confused and sometimes idiotic man.”

When Congress, at the request of many police officials, considered a broad ban on handgun bullets capable of piercing bulletproof vests, Mr. Giuliani – though personally supportive of the measure – pointed out flaws in the bill and laid out the [Reagan] Administration’s case for a weaker alternative more acceptable to gun lobbyists.

But he angered some [Reagan] Administrative officials when he added a single sentence to his testimony in which he urged Congress to pass the bill. A similar measure was passed several years later, after gun groups softened their opposition.

Mr. Giuliani stopped just short of explicitly criticizing Republican members of Congress who last year filibustered the Brady Law that mandates a nationwide waiting period for the purchase of handguns, and now oppose President Clinton’s proposal to license handgun owners.

But when asked whether the Republican lawmakers should support such measures, he told reporters, “I believe it is very necessary.” He pointedly reminisced about his White House visit with President Clinton in December, in which he endorsed the Administration proposal for national fun licensing, and added that his proposals today were meant “to start developing the interest in national and international regulation of guns.”

Democratic lawmakers praised the Mayor’s push for gun control. “It would be great if Mayor Giuliani could become the point Republican pushing comprehensive gun control legislation,” said Representative Charles E. Schumer, the Brooklyn Democrat who is the leading proponent of handgun control in the House of Representatives. “Today he took a step in that direction.”

Richard M. Aborn, president of Handgun Control Inc., a national advocacy group, also supported the Mayor’s efforts. “This is in line with our thinking that gun control must be a bipartisan issue,” he said. “We welcome the Mayor’s support for licensing and registration.”

He marked the 14^th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan by joining the former Presidential press secretary, Jim Brady, and his wife, Sarah, and other officials at a news conference intended to counter a House Republican drive to repeal the assault weapons ban enacted last year. “It’s really amazing that we’re still here debating about what has to be done about handguns and what has to be done about guns in general,” said Mr. Giuliani.

In fact, the Mayor has been a strong proponent of gun control since his days as a Federal prosecutor, and early in his term, after the Brooklyn Bridge shootings in February of 1994, he proposed that guns be subject to the same licensing requirements as driving a car. He revived the issue last month after the Empire State Building shootings, effectively making a national policy issue out of a local incident.

Assuming that he eventually approves the use of hollow point bullets, as seems likely, he will have some insulation from charges that he is in any way gun-happy. With gun control overwhelmingly popular in the city as a whole, it is an issue that can’t miss, a political “no-brainer.”

“Whatever a New Yorker’s philosophical orientation, liberal, conservative, left or right, they have to share a small space,” said Raymond B. Harding, the Liberal Party leader and the Mayor’s top political adviser. “At that close proximity, guns are evil, and you don’t need a pollster to tell you that.”

The Mayor praised the proposals made Wednesday by President Clinton to keep guns out of the hands of non-citizens by imposing a residency requirement. But he said the idea doesn’t go far enough, and urged that owning a handgun be subject to the same scrutiny as operating a car: applicants should pass a written and a physical test, should be subject to a waiting period and a background check, and should be required to have liability insurance.

He acknowledged that this would require states to set up large bureaucracies – which he jokingly hoped would operate more efficiently than the Department of Motor Vehicles – but said the cost would be more than offset by the reductions in crime.

In repeating his call for a national gun licensing law yesterday, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani introduced an unusual kind of “southern strategy” to his re-election platform: Blame five southern states if the city’s crime rate doesn’t continue its steep descent.

As he related it at a breakfast meeting of the Citizens Crime Commission yesterday, his thinking goes like this:

The city’s crime reductions cannot continue much further, he said, especially if guns continue to flow freely into New York from elsewhere in the country, where gun laws are more lax. The five southern states that account for 60 percent of the guns in the city are Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina, he said, and if Congress would only impose handgun licensing on those states and the rest of the country, New York’s crime rate would plummet even further.

Mr. Giuliani has long advocated national gun regulations, including background checks and waiting periods for fun purchases, and a ban on assault weapons. He has not changed, according to Ms. Mindel [a Giuliani spokesperson].

Once again taking sharp exception with the dominant conservative wing of his own party, Mr. Giuliani said in an interview that the proposed crackdown on illegal immigrants was deliberately intended to play to the public’s worst fears of foreigners and did not take into consideration the positive effects of immigrants on cities like New York.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani struck a blow for decency and common sense when he criticized Congress’s proposed crackdown on both legal and illegal immigrants….

Some of what the Mayor finds disturbing emerged from a Republican-dominated panel on immigration reform that issued its recommendations in June. Mr. Giuliani was right to characterize key parts of the package as pandering to an irrational fear of foreigners.

The Mayor did not mention the Republican Party by name and said in an interview later that he was not singling out his party or fellow politicians. Still, his defense of the United Nations’ achievements and of immigrants’ contribution to the nation marked the latest in a series of attempts by Mr. Giuliani to set himself apart from the newly dominant conservative wing of the Republican majority. Many of those Republicans want to end or cut back financing to the U.N. and favor severe immigration restrictions.

Rudy would continue to make city services available to all immigrants, regardless of immigration status.

Giuliani has just made another move in [Liberal Party Chairman Ray] Harding’s direction…. He now opposes tuition tax credits, concluding that they “would encourage people to take their kids out of the City school system.”

Some ask, How can the Liberal Party support a candidate who disagrees with the Liberal Party position on so many gut issues? But when the Liberal Party Policy Committee reviewed a list of key social issues of deep concern to progressive New Yorkers, we found that Rudy Giuliani agreed with the Liberal Party’s stance on a majority of such issues. He agreed with the Liberal Party’s views on affirmative action, gay rights, gun control, school prayer and tuition tax credits. As Mayor, Rudy Giuliani would uphold the Constitutional and legal rights to abortion.

…take Mr. Giuliani’s position on the city’s disastrous rent-control laws. They are, he says, “an important part of keeping the middle class in New York City.” He supports the so-called anti-warehousing law that forces landlords to rent apartments they own, instead of keeping them vacant while converting them to co-ops. He took this position to ease the housing shortage, he says, because he’s seen “the terrible things it’s done to federal agents who have to live two hours away.” The would-be Republican nominee, in fact, has come out for extending rent control beyond apartments to commercial property as well.

Albany – Mayor Dinkins and Republican rival Rudolph Giuliani joined in a rare show of unity here yesterday as both urged the GOP-controlled state Senate to renew rent regulations for more than 2.4 million city tenants for another two years.

David N. Dinkins, the Democratic candidate, has depicted Mr. Giuliani, former United States Attorney in Manhattan, as a loyal Reagan Republican who carried out the President's agenda that “was painful to our city and our urban centers.”

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani has tried to distance himself from the conservative [Reagan] Administration, pointing to occasions when he dissented from its policies and portraying himself as the candidate of a nonpartisan reform movement….

But in his primary campaign, Mr. Giuliani noted frequently that he was supported by the liberal wing of the Republican Party and maintained that he never embraced Mr. Reagan's broad conservative agenda.

On one occasion his campaign staff released a copy of a letter he wrote in June 1984, as United States Attorney in Manhattan, in which he appeared to oppose efforts by the Administration to improperly deny Social Security disability benefits to some recipients.

Instead of allowing the electorate to think Giuliani is a “Reagan Republican” the Giuliani campaign should encourage the feeling toward [Mayor] David Dinkins that “sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

The Giuliani campaign should emphasize its candidate’s independence from traditional national Republican policies. Especially useful in this strategy is Giuliani’s role in overturning a Reagan administration attempt to throw disabled people off the Social Security rolls, his prosecution of Republican elected officials – especially his authorization for calling his boss, Attorney Edwin Meese III, a sleaze, and his un-Republican views on many social issues of concern to New Yorkers, like abortion, gun control and bias protection for homosexuals.

Vouchers would be a terrible mistake because they would bleed the public schools of needed financing.

We’re going to see increased calls for privatization and for vouchers for private and parochial school education. Alternatives which in my view will weaken if not create the collapse of the New York City public school system…. I believe the voucher system in New York City would be very, very troublesome. Our system is so large that making that kind of transition would pose tremendous difficulties. Not to mention the constitutional and legal difficulties that would be entailed in providing tax relief and tax dollars for religious education.

I wanted to know if he supports tuition tax credits and vouchers, which he doesn’t.

Giuliani himself was on record as repeatedly opposing a voucher system. As a candidate in 1993, he had told United Federation of Teachers’ President Sandra Feldman that he believed vouchers were “unconstitutional.”

In May 1995, he told a UFT conference that “vouchers would bleed the public schools of needed funds.”

In a speech to the Wharton Club in August 1995, the mayor declared, “Vouchers would weaken, if not create the collapse of the New York City public-school system.”

But by January 1999, Giuliani, facing term limits, was seriously thinking about running for the Senate in 2000. His advisers and pollsters were telling him that if he switched his position on vouchers, it would help him with Catholic voters upstate, and the national Republican Party.

So he slipped a favorable reference to a voucher plan into his state of the city address that month.

According to Wayne Barrett’s definitive Giuliani biography, Rudy!, following this voucher’s reference, the mayor told an alarmed Crew, “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a political thing, a campaign thing. I’m not going to do anything. Don’t take it seriously.”

When I ran for Mayor both times, I was asked very, very often to do the following:

Mr. Giuliani criticized Mr. Pataki’s proposal to cut taxes as “a shell game” that would hurt everyone in the state…

“Giuliani did not attend the war in Vietnam because federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon wrote a letter to the draft board in 1969 and got him out. Giuliani was a law clerk for MacMahon, who at the time was hearing selective service cases. MacMahon’s letter to Giuliani’s draft board stated that Giuliani was so necessary as a law clerk that he could not be allowed to get shot at in Vietnam.”

“Giuliani had been turned down in his bid to obtain an occupational deferment for his work as a law clerk before the judge wrote to the draft board in 1968, the newspaper said.

“Spokesman for the Republican mayoral candidate told the Post such occupational deferments were routine, but experts informed the paper they were almost never granted to law clerks.”

Judge MacMahon wrote a letter for all the clerks in his office. As other judges – they all did it.

But former Manhattan federal Judge Marvin E. Frankel, who was on the bench during the Vietnam era, flatly contradicted Perkins.

“Not by any means was a law clerk automatically deferred,” he said. “I don’t remember ever writing a letter for any of my clerks.”

Asked if it was common practice for federal judges to write letters to draft boards for their law clerks, Judge Frankel said:

“But more than a dozen draft experts and lawyers knowledgeable on the Vietnam-era draft told The Post an occupational deferment for a law clerk in 1969 was almost unheard of.

“One leader of a veteran’s group called it a ‘one in a million’ occurrence.”

Ironically, after avoiding the fighting, Giuliani worked in a department supposed to punish others who aid the same.

The Justice Department is preparing to prosecute young men who fail to register for a draft, top-level officials disclosed Tuesday.

The government has formulated guidelines for prosecutors to use in deciding who should be prosecuted. The guidelines will be sent to local U.S. attorneys around the country for their use.

“The attorney general made the decision that we are going to prosecute these cases. Now it’s a question of how we are going to prosecute,” Associate Attorney General Rudolph Giuliani told United Press International.

“Our intention will quite clearly be to enforce the law,” the official said.

“Six years after Judge MacMahon wrote his letter, Giuliani took a top-level Justice Dept. job in which he helped carry out the strictest part of President Ford’s policy on dealing with suspected Vietnam draft-dodgers.”

George J. Marlin is the author/editor of ten books including Squandered Opportunities: New York’s Pataki Years (2006), The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact (2004) and Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party (2002). In 1993, Mr. Marlin was the Conservative Party nominee for mayor of the City of New York, and in 1994 he served on Governor-elect Pataki's transition team. He served two terms as Executive Director and CEO of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In that capacity he managed thirty-five facilities including the World Trade Center, LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark Airports, PATH Subway and the four bridges and two tunnels that connect New York and New Jersey. His articles have appeared in numerous periodicals including The New York Times, New York Post, National Review, Newsday, The Washington Times and the New York Daily News. Mr. Marlin is also general editor of The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton.

Strober, Deborah and Gerald, Giuliani: Flawed or Flawless?, Wiley & Sons, 2007

I think you are welcome in this thread. Any liberal quotes you can provide about Rudy would be helpful.

Or, if you want to be our ombudsman, please provide correction for any inaccurate claims made about Rudy. We don’t want to have incorrect information.

What is being asked of participants is that they stick to the topic of the thread, which is liberal statements made by Rudy. That means not bringing up extraneous attacks about the motives of people who compile lists of quotes by Rudy, or attacking other candidates, or posting positive conservative statements by Rudy or other candidates.

This is the thread for all the liberal statements made by Rudy.

There you go. That's what we need. Here's a great quote from the article you provided:

His fiscal management — yeah, his first term was okay by my standards, but then again so was Pataki's. Once the money was there, Rudy was a drunken sailor just like Pataki was a drunken sailor. He's not a fiscal conservative by nature. He's not a conservative philosophically by nature. Never has been.

However, this still isn't quite what the thread is about. We don't care about what OTHER people say about Rudy for this thread, we want all the quotes and references about what Rudy himself has said and done.

As a Rudy supporter, you might well have some good quotes to provide for us of Rudy being liberal, or at least be able to tell us if any of the quotes are inaccurate or out of context.

Certainly though you would want us to study all the things said by Rudy.

Conservatives do not vote for liberals!

Conservatives do not promote liberal candidates.

Conservatives will fight as long as it takes.

In otherwards we aren't going to shut up and go away.

Well, Reagan made James Webb the secretary of the Navy, a pretty major position. He’s now that quasi-communist democrat senator from Virginia.

Rudy was put in a non-partisan position in the Reagan administration, one of law enforcement.

Imagine that. A “life-long liberal” was handpicked by Ronald Reagan for an important job in his administration.

Rudy was picked by Reagan's AG, not personally by Reagan. Get it right, ok?

Oh wait, you're not hooked up to the collective RudyBrain are you?

You'll have to get back to Rudyville for further instructions, we'll wait.

Reagan became a republican because as a conservative the democratic party no longer offered a home for him. His principles were with the republican party, and he helped push it further to the right.

Rudy became a republican because it was a way to get jobs from them. His principles are with the democratic party, and the only thing he would do to the republican party is push it further to the LEFT.

“Gallup:

Rudy 38

McCain 16

Thompson 10

Hunter 2”

And what does the gallup poll prove? Nothing.

The only polls that mean anything are the ones that come from conservatives.

From gopnation.com:

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (568) 56%
Rep. Ron Paul (247) 24%
Rep. Duncan Hunter (208) 20%

FReeper poll (with 10% liberals)

Who do you support in the GOP presidential primaries?
Fred Thompson
43.2%

Duncan Hunter
11.6%

Rudy Giuliani
10.6%

Newt Gingrich
9.9%

Ron Paul
7.2%

Tom Tancredo
6.1%

Mit Romney
4.6%

Undecided/pass
4.3%

Other
1.4%

John McCain
1.1%

Conservatives do not vote for liberals.

Thank you for reinforcing something I have been asking for the past month or so. It is more of an intelligent process to be FOR someone than against someone. The negative (anti) mindset is the hallmark of the Democrat party. They run on no issues and stand for nothing. I trust an argument FOR someone much more than against someone. To spend that much time and effort to attempt to drag someone down should embarrass the author.

I am FOR Rudy in how he deals with terrorists. The 1995 Yassar Arafat incident, the $10M check given back to that smarmy sheik, the refusing to attend the Castro function, The standing up to the obscene depictions of Mary with the elephant poo; the list goes on. He did this in the face of the “conventional” wisdom which sucked up to petty dictators and ignored terrorists. He also provided the needed leadership on 9/11. As far as those who discount that performance of leadership, I ask you to tell me who else has such a resume in this area.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.